8.0474 Opinions Sought: E-Publishing (1/35)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Fri, 21 Apr 1995 23:00:17 EDT

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 8, No. 0474. Friday, 21 Apr 1995.

Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 12:10:34 -0400
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (Willard McCarty)
Subject: electronic publishing: how is it done?

This is a fact- and opinion-gathering query about electronic publishing.

Lately I have been thinking about how electronic publishing might best be
done within academic institutions. I would very much like to hear from
anyone with actual experience and some ideas about the immediate future. The
most difficult question, it seems, is what kind of model to use: what are
the institutional pieces and how are they put together? Clearly there are
pieces that usually fall within the domain of computing centres (software
tools, technical support); others usually belong to university presses and
outside publishers; others are administrative (coordination, legal advice,
negotiations); still others involve the faculty, where the things to be
published tend to originate.

Anyone who looks around the Internet these days can spot some good examples.
Most of these, I suspect, have come into being through a great deal of ad
hoc effort from individuals who have seen that something needs doing, so
they have simply done it. Now that we are all convinced this is a good
thing, how do we institutionalize it in a way that preserves the
revolutionary and very positive aspects of autonomous online publication
while not overburdening the few people who know how and care that it is done?

If I am manifesting great ignorance and naivete, please be patient and send
along your wisdom. I will be most grateful.

I guess that replies would be of interest to many people, so perhaps they
should all be sent directly to Humanist rather than only to me.

Thanks very much.

WM

Willard McCarty / Centre for Computing in the Humanities
University of Toronto / mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca
http://www.cch.epas.utoronto.ca:8080/cch/wm.html